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Apple puts refurbished iPhones on sale

$100 off

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Want a cheaper iPhone? Apple has begun offering refurbished handsets for $100 less than it charges for freshly made models.

So a refurbished 4GB iPhone costs $399, while the pre-owned 8GB model costs $499. Apple said both come with a one-year warranty, extendible to two years with a $69 payment.

They are tested and certified as fully operational, the vendor said, and "as good as new". Each refurbished iPhone comes in the standard box, with full documentation, accessories and so on.

The handsets presumably come from the stock of devices returned by original buyers because they didn't like the handset, the AT&T network it connects to, or because the thing didn't work and were replaced. Hey, some lucky buyer might even get the unit The Registerbought then returned...

Apple make non-warranty returnees pay a ten per cent "restocking fee", if they've opened the box. This presumably covers the cost of returning the device to its original, pre-purchase state so it can be sold again, as a refurbished unit.

That ten per cent doesn't cover the $100 Apple's losing on the purchase price of a brand-new unit, of course, but it helps.